Taco Bell Conducts Campaign on pogo.com™

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pogo.com™, the leading independent provider of online games for the mass market, disclosed on Monday, July 17 details of a major online advertising campaign being conducted on the pogo.com service by Taco Bell. The month-long program, which ends July 19, is part of the first online advertising effort dedicated to Taco Bell's "Late Night" campaign, intended to raise awareness of Taco Bell's late operating hours among the chain's core audience. Four different ad products, comprised of seven different components, are being used to integrate the Taco Bell brand into the actual consumer gameplay experience. The campaign is expected to generate more than 1.5 million ad impressions and 4 billion "cardback impressions" across pogo.com's entire ad network, which includes 18 of the most heavily trafficked sites on the web. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Taco Bell media campaign, conducted by FCB Worldwide, is aimed at raising awareness among core Heavy Fast Food Users (HFFUs) and includes sponsorship of the entire Video Poker game—the most popular game on pogo.com and by far the most heavily-used mass market game on the Web. More than two million people are projected to spend over 4.5 million hours playing Video Poker during the month-long sponsorship. Taco Bell's logo appears on the back of every card, resulting in more than 4 billion cardback impressions in the Video Poker area, in addition to interstitial, banner and button ads throughout the network. The campaign also includes interstitial and button ads targeted by age and other game types, such as arcade games.

"Reaching a large, consumer audience in an online leisure-time setting with a variety of ad products is a key component of our overall efforts to further establish Taco Bell as a great choice for a quick meal in the late-night timeframe," said Samantha Muchmore, associate media director on the Taco Bell account at FCB Worldwide. "pogo.com is a wonderful environment for accomplishing this—it's hip, entertaining, and engenders the kind of receptive mindset usually found in a television audience, but with the added advantage of micro-targeting and interactivity on the part of the consumer."

Creative elements of the campaign leverage the popular Taco Bell Chihuahua and emphasize the message that Taco Bell is open late at night. Through the first half of the campaign, click-through rates have been strong, with click rates on the interstitial ad running in pogo.com's arcade games averaging 8.66 percent, roughly twenty times the industry average. Because of pogo.com's unique distribution model, the Taco Bell ads are also running in the online games areas of Excite, Go, iWon, NBCi, Netscape, and more than a dozen other top-50 Web destinations which feature the pogo.com games service.

pogo.com is the leading Internet provider of family games for everyone in the broad consumer market. A popular service for consumers of all ages and backgrounds, pogo.com offers free online card, board, word, puzzle, casino, trivia and classic arcade games.